


A van of Martins

by Roadstergal



Category: Cabin Pressure, Real Person Fiction
Genre: Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-12
Updated: 2011-09-12
Packaged: 2017-10-23 16:51:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/252595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roadstergal/pseuds/Roadstergal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A whimsy I had after Rotterdam.  All in fun, any resemblance to any actual people, living or dead, is purely intentional, but not intended to be reflective of reality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Awfully nice of you to show up on such short notice,” Martin told the man sitting next to him - who was named, conveniently enough, Martin. The man was even shorter than Martin himself, serious and ruddy-faced, and Martin couldn’t help warming to him.

“Oh, it’s no problem,” the other Martin replied, looking through the windscreen. He looked through it with an almost painful intensity, whipping his head every two seconds almost exactly to check his mirrors. “I was free.”

“Almost free - you could charge more, you know. You’re asking about half what most of the ‘Man With Van’s are.”

“It’s not a very good van,” the shorter, redder Martin confessed.

“Well, it works, and it certainly fits the bed,” the slightly less ginger Martin replied. “I saw that ad for the dinosaur bed, and - well, my daughter’s birthday is next week, and it just seemed the perfect thing.”

“It’s quite small,” the small Martin replied, whipping his head to check his mirrors, “hardly takes up half the back. You could have borrowed a neighbor’s minivan.”

“It’s all right, it’s better to have more room than less. Besides, I don’t drive.”

“You don’t drive?” More head-whipping, then the intense stare. “Why not?”

“Why?” Martin laughed. “I don’t feel a need; I get around just fine without. And if I need to pick something up, I can just give you a ring.” He winked at the shorter Martin, who was staring fixedly out the windscreen and missed it. “Erm - second house on this road, on the left.”

The shorter Martin pulled up in front of the house, his face tensing as he pressed the brake gently, then let off on it at the end as if his life depended on a proper champagne stop. The slightly taller Martin had to smile. This other Martin was a decent fellow, really, quite earnest and meticulous. It was hard to reconcile him with this ratty van, honestly, especially considering the crisp pilot’s jacket he chose to wear, which came dangerously close to snagging and ripping as he helped Martin carry the bed into the spare room. He and Amanda would move it to the bedroom while the kids were at school.

“I’ll give you a ring if I need a van again,” Martin replied, slipping a few notes more than the shorter Martin’s asking price into the man’s hand.

“I’ll come - providing I’m back from Somalia,” ruddy Martin replied, hopping into his truck.

Martin shook his head as he watched the van pull away. _Somalia_?


	2. Chapter 2

"Hello, Martin, it's Martin."  
...  
"Which one? Do you know lots of Martins? Besides yourself?"  
...  
"Your new co-worker, I see. But... ah, you didn't hire him just because his name is Martin. Yes, wise."  
...  
"Oh! This is the Martin you helped move a bed. Shaped like a dinosaur... yes, that one. Look, do you have time this coming Sunday? I need to help a friend move."  
...  
"Eight am, if that's all right - we need to get an early start. It might take all day."  
...  
"Was that a 'yippee'?"  
...  
"All right, then, come by mine on Sunday at eight. Got a pen? I'll give you my address."

* * *

"I always wondered what the collective noun was. Seems it's 'a van of Martins.'"

Martin laughed easily from his seat. He had taken an instant liking to Martin - good thing, too. It could have gone either way, given that Martin was a successful actor, while Martin was a tall, handsome, unsuccessful actor cum unsuccessful taxi driver cum moderately successful co-employee of Icarus Removals.

Martin tried to add in a cheerful laugh of his own, but he was too tense from the stress of driving in London traffic. It came out more like a bark, and he disguised it with a cough. "Not far, now, from your friend's..."

"About fifteen minutes, I'd guess. Ben - his name's Ben. You'll likely recognize him." Martin looked over at where Martin was driving. "You remind me of him, actually. Something in the voice, and around the eyes."

"Poor sod," Martin muttered. Good on him to have gotten anywhere at all, carrying features that would remind anyone of his own ruddy pony's face.

"Sounds like the kind of thing he'd say," Martin sighed, looking out of the window.

"Moving somewhere more posh?" Martin asked from the back seat. He could easily see over the other two Martins, and so hand graciously given up shotgun to the guest Martin.

"No - broke up with his girlfriend. Long-term deal they had going, too. I feel quite sad for him." His voice was indeed sad, and Martin wanted to give him a comforting glance - but he knew that any deviation from his well-honed routine of every-five-second full mirror checks, with the rest of the time spent paying careful attention to the traffic beyond the windscreen, would be disastrous.

"Gosh," he said, sadly, in lieu of the comforting glance.

* * *

Martin, being an actor (albeit not a good one), did, indeed, recognize Ben, asking, "Weren't you in Creation? You were fantastic!" Then shutting up when he saw how despondent Ben was.

The Martin who knew Ben best of the trio gave him a hug, and Martin was impressed at how Martin did not seem shorter than Ben when he was doing so. It was a trick Martin wished he could pull off himself. Not that the third Martin had to - he was easily as tall as Ben, if not a bit taller.

Martin and Martin decided to start making themselves useful while Ben and Martin talked a bit in the lowered voices of Private Matters. Ben's belongings were neatly packed in boxes, sitting in the front room of a flat that was clearly still being occupied by somebody else, in that desultory breaking-up fashion.

"Poor bugger," Martin muttered to Martin as they loaded the first round of boxes in the van. "It's so hard, breaking up."

"Is it?" Martin asked. "I never got far enough in a relationship for 'breaking up' to ever be a real concern."

Martin laughed, and Martin laughed along with him as if it had been a joke, but it really hadn't. Between revision for the pilot's exam, the multiple takings of the pilot's exam, the endless job applications, and the time sucking nature of being a part-time van driver and a hobbyist pilot - combined with his own natural lack of charm and awkwardness, of course - he was still a virgin in his late thirties, and could count the number of girls he had kissed on one hand. So could Captain Hook, come to that.

After the first few loads, Martin and Ben came down to lend a hand, and the Transit was not more than three-quarters full when all of the boxes and the small amount of furniture next to the pile were loaded in.

"Everything I have, now," Ben murmured sadly, and Martin put his arm around the man. Martin wished he could feel that comfortable and relaxed with physical affection. He looked at the tableux curiously. He reminded Martin of Ben? This was his first chance to take a _proper_ look, and the idea was ridiculous. Ben was handsome, tall and angular with striking eyes and full lips, while Martin himself as a short, red-faced gnome. Ah, well, Martin must have been being polite.

"I'll take you around in a day or two," Martin told Ben, not letting go. "Get you some proper furniture."

 _Please, please, hire us when you do,_ Martin begged inwardly.


	3. Chapter 3

"Do you know what I think?" Martin asked Martin in a low voice, loading boxes onto the furniture dolly that he had talked Martin into buying. Martin had thought it a needless expense - much like every expense when it came to Icarus Removals, really - but he had to admit it had increased their efficiency, therefore their ability to schedule multiple jobs in a day, therefore had paid for itself three times over already.

"Do I want to know what you think?" Martin grumbled. He did not have the physique for multiple hours of manual labor, and it was making him tetchy.

Martin blazed ahead. "I think Martin is soft on Ben."

Martin paused. " _That_ Martin?" he asked, jerking a thumb in the direction of Ben's new flat, in which the two friends were discussing room layouts and organizing boxes.

"Which other one?" Martin asked, as if ignoring the fact that there were at least two others within a hundred-foot radius.

"But... he's in a relationship..." The word tasted odd on Martin's lips.

"Yes, and people are only ever interested in one person at a time," Martin sighed.

Martin pondered this as he wheeled the dolly over to the service lift. It made... some odd sort of sense... but really, it was none of his damn business, was it?

The unloading went more awkwardly than the loading, but it progressed with a certain inevitability, and so it was that Martin carried the last box up the stairs himself with a certain relief.

Ben sat on a chair that had proved particularly troublesome to carry up the stairs, an old overstuffed number with large arms. Martin sat on one of the arms, speaking to him in a low voice. "...stay tonight?" Martin heard as he slipped in the door.

Ben looked up at Martin, his eyes swollen and red. "That's awfully nice, but... not tonight. I need to be alone."  
"Let me know if you change your mind," Martin replied, and Martin could hear, laced through that statement - _please change your mind, please change your mind._

He set the box quietly just inside of the door, and slipped out.


	4. Chapter 4

For various different reasons, tall failed-actor Martin's suggestion that they all go out for a pint (his phrasing was particularly firm) met with universal acclaim. The Martin with rather more success at acting claimed he would be happy to take a cab home when the time came, and so the nominal pilot Martin parked the van near the building in Fitton that held his attic space, taking them around to a truly dismal local pub where the drinks were affordable, and occasionally paletable.

The fairest-haired and second-shortest Martin insisted on paying for several rounds of drinks, plenty to make the shortest and least attractive Martin quite soused, and the tallest Martin loose enough to ask that first Martin for tips on how to be a successful actor.

"What... acting schools did you go to?" Martin asked.

"They have schools for that?" Martin seemed both startled and depressed.

"Yea, but mate... I wouldn't waste the money. I mean, lookat you... you're a shit actor, but you're good at the managerial side of things..."

"I'm shit at all the sides of things," Martin muttered into his drink.

"Oh, don't say that, you're a pilot and have a van..." Martin tossed his way, then turned back to Martin. "What doya mean, managerial?"

"An agent, like..." Martin appraised Martin critically. "Considered being a model? You just have to look good and sit there."

"That's what I'm best at!" Martin replied, excitedly. He frowned into his pint. "M'wife was so happy when I started working with Martin here. Said I should have a proper job."

"Proper job. Pilot should be proper job." Martin drained his drink and looked moodily at the table.

"I should go home to my wife, speaking of," Martin sighed. "She doesn't like it when I get too drunk."

"I want another drink," Martin replied, and Martin looked up sharply at the note in the man's voice. Maybe Martin was right. Maybe the bloke _was_ in love with Ben.

"I'll shtay," Martin told Martin - he hardly felt up to walking back to his attic anyway - and Martin bid farewell to the other two with visible relief.

"Tall handsome bashtard," Martin muttered once the man left.

"He's your co-worker," Martin chided, ordering another round.

"That's worse! He's... all... handsome, and tall, and in the van, being handsome and tall..."

"Handsome isn't everything. You're striking." Martin drained half his pint in one go, staring at Martin with a strangely probing look.

"You said I look like... your friend," Martin said, feeling canny.

"You do."

Martin definitely had about five pints too many in him, and Martin three, when they staggered out of the pub and down the pavement. The slightly less drunk Martin asked the thoroughly soused one where he lived, and before he remembered that this was a rather embarrassing thing, Martin told him.

"But... I can make it... I'm f... fine..."

"Like fuck you are," Martin replied, dragging Martin up the stairs and fending off giggling drunk students. "Where are you?"

"Attic," Martin muttered, defeated.

* * *

"You can't mean... this attic?" Martin said, stunned, opening the door.

Martin looked around. He didn't really see what Martin had to be upset about. Yes, it was small and dark, and the roof canted so that three-quarters of it was not high enough for a Martin-sized man to stand upright, and half of it required crawling, but still - there was a bed, or at least a reasonable mattress on the floor, and books, and Pot Noodle, and a plug-in kettle.... Martin staggered across the room, falling onto the mattress with relief. Home.

Martin walked closer, warily. "You dun treat yourself right," he sighed, collapsing next to the mattress. "Just like Ben."

"Can't afford to."

"Then get a better bloody goddam job, suck it up and be a first officer or some shit for now, just so you get paid to do what you like..." Martin's eyes glittered in the dark, and Martin fancied that the man must be seeing his friend in him, and he'd only kissed one bird for real and he hadn't terribly liked her, and he did like Martin, and he sat up and kissed the othr man drunkly, sloppily.

Martin gasped and rolled forward, pressing Martin to the mattress, kissing him firmly and deeply. Martin was thrilled. Trina hadn't been all that good a kisser, he decided, and now he had a basis for comparison, because Martin was simply brilliant - his tongue snaking into Martin's mouth, rubbing his tongue, plunging deep, his lips moving on Martin's, moaning into the other man's mouth.

This went on for a fantastic bit of time that Martin couldn't really put a time to - minutes to hours, probably couldn't have been days - before Martin drew back, pulling in a ragged breath, and wiping his mouth on his jacket sleeve. "Sorry... sorry... thut was... inap... inappropriate." He staggered to his feet, pulling money out of his pocket. "Thanks... thanks again for the help, forgot to pay earlier..." He let some notes fall, then staggered out of the room. Martin listened to his footsteps clatter down the stairs, growing fainter and finally disappearing in the noise of drunk students preparing for true Monday hangovers.

Martin sighed. He was alone, and horny, on his mattress in his attic. Fortunately, this was a situation he was very familiar with, and very practiced at dealing with. He opened his trousers, licked his hand, and started resolutely to wank.


End file.
